One or more aspects of the inventive concept relate to an asynchronous bridge, and more particularly, to an asynchronous bridge capable of preventing occurrence of a critical path, a method of operating the asynchronous bridge, and a system on chip (SoC) including the asynchronous bridge.
A SoC is a highly integrated semiconductor technology whereby conventional complicated systems having various functions may be embodied as one system. Research has been actively conducted on development of SoC. in particular, a method of connecting circuits (also referred to herein as “IP”) installed in a chip has emerged as a very important issue.
In general, a SoC includes a processor that controls the entire system, and various circuits controlled by the processor. By the term “circuit” we mean, a circuit, a logic unit, or a combination thereof that may be integrated in the SoC. Code may be stored in the circuit or the logic unit, for example.
The circuit may be a central processing unit (CPU); each of cores included in the CPU; a multi-format codec (MFC); a video module, e.g., a camera interface, a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) processor, a video processor, or a mixer; a three-dimensional (3D) graphic core; an audio system; a driver; a display driver; a volatile memory device; a non-volatile memory; a memory controller; a cache memory, or the like.
The circuit may be classified into a slave circuit that is operated only under control of a processor, and a master circuit that may request another slave circuit to establish data communication. in some cases, one circuit may act as both a slave circuit and a master circuit, for example.
Since circuits have different clock frequencies, various clock domains may be used in one SoC. In this case, data should be exchanged between the circuits having different clock domains.